The Lamb and the Scapegoat
by Sunuxal
Summary: If Judas has betrayed his lord because of greed for money, why then all the grief and desperation afterwards...? Slash – but it's about love, not sex. Not really.


I want to thank **Doors need lurve **2 for her quick beta-reading, who has met the great challenge to correct my English and ghastly punctuation. :-)

* * *

Important for the understanding of the Story:

Judas Iscariot is a **zealot** here, or more precisely a **sicarii**.

The zealots were a Jewish paramilitary resistance movement which fought against the occupying power of the Roman Empire. The sicarii (i.e. "_dagger-carrier_") were a sub-group of the zealots, an elite troop of professional assassins. According to the Bible Simon (St. Peter), one of Jesus' followers was one of them and according to a theory the sobriquet 'Iscariot' is a hint, that Judas was also a sicarii.

The idea that Barabbas (according to the Gospels, the man for whose discharge the people vote when they could choose between Jesus and him) wasn't just a simple bandit but a/the leader of the zealots is also in discussion for long.  
(The "none of them" in the story applies to the circumstance that Barabbas' ('_bar abbas'_, son of Abbas) proper name, according to a version of Matthew's Gospel, was also 'Jesus'.)

I use the Aramaic/Hebrew names (so far as I know them) because I believe that thereby one recognizes the persons rather as humans, as individuals than as "placeholders" for a certain type (the betrayer, the disbeliever, the redeemer, etc.).

(Other definitions are to find at the end of the story.)

* * *

_  
__Judas lowered his head and said after a while: "If it where you, who was to betray his master, would you do it?" __  
__Jesus thought for a long time, at last he said: "No, I am afraid I couldn't do it, therefore God took pity on me and gave me the easier mission to be crucified."_

Nikos Kazantzakis – The last temptation

_  
__They belong together – Jesus and Judas, Judas in Jesus' hand. Both had to go their way – joint even in death: High over the ground on the wood._

Walter Jens - The Case of Judas 

* * *

You.

You rest there. Apart the others, who searched for a place near the fire yesterday evening, in groups close to each other to share the warmth of their bodies and to be protected from the cold wind.  
Only you lie there alone, because you reside for praying, came back when they already slept.

Are you cold?

I force my feet to move again, wander onward through the darkness, like the peace-less ghost of a murderer.  
Which I am.  
But I'm still alive, yet this spirit clings still in its cover of flesh with its one destructive desire.

I am back at the starting point, have completed another circle, stay again under the tamarisk, few steps, unreachable, far away from you.  
I will creep to you, soundlessly like death.  
Will lie beside you.  
Will warm you with the hellfire that burns in me.  
Instead I resume my futile peregrination, circle the camp, a hungry jackal, discouraged by the light.

The Greeks tell a story about one who committed an outrage against their gods. Who was punished by standing tied up in a pond in Hades to suffer everlasting hunger, everlasting thirst, because the water moves away from his mouth when he bends to drink, the branches above him lash away by the wind whenever he stretches out to reach for the fruits.

Do you know why I don't fear God? There is nothing he can do to me. Nothing he hasn't already punished me with.  
And love him? How could I. He is too great, too abstract, too far away.  
You say no, he is like a father.  
I spit in the dust. _A father_! This Roman, who procreated me, is more than enough. Whose only legacy was this damned hair colour and the blemish which he stigmatized me with already in my mother's belly.

* * *

The sun rises up.  
I kick the others with my feet to wake them.  
They stand up repining, stiff of cold. Discussing if it would be better to ignite the fire again to warm up, or to leave immediately to reach the goal as quick as possible. They moan about their empty stomachs, share the rest of the stale water.

From the corner of my eye, I see your patient smile. Don't these fools recognize it?! This burden which seems to weigh on you each day more and more?  
No – they just think about their stomachs, like fatuitous baaing sheep.  
I've never understood why you mess about with them.

Or with me, rabid dog who I am.

I put an end to their discussion by pushing the embers apart with some fierce kicks and suffocate the blaze with sand.  
One of them tries half-assed to deter me from doing so, but I jostle him, snarling towards the street and so they back down.  
Finally the last one moves.  
Nobody let them who wander with us and sleep around their own fires know that we leave – it isn't necessary, they will follow. We'll meet them again, tomorrow in Jerusalem at the latest.

I stay behind, walk at the end as the last one.  
Jochanan is by your side, talks to you. You are too far away as if I would be able to understand you, but I see from the inclination of your head, that you are listening to him.  
From all this creepers and lickspittles he is the most endurable to me; he is too young, too naïve for real hypocrisy. But, in this moment, I hate him so much that I want to cut his throat.

The others gaze furtively back at me, whisper whenever they believe I wouldn't notice.  
Juda, the red-haired bastard.  
Juda, the hot-tempered, the madman.  
They know that I am a Sicarii, they know about the time I tried to drown my madness in the blood of the occupiers, when I tried to prove myself.  
They fear me. Rightly so. I am afraid of myself.

* * *

The sun climbs higher, the street become more crowded.  
Horsemen and carts overtake us, other sleepers get up from their camps on the roadside, dowse their fires, shoulder their baggage and load their donkeys.  
All of them roam to Jerusalem, to be there with friends and relatives in time for the beginning of the celebration tomorrow.

Of course they recognize you, they accost you or just try to get close to you.  
I leave my place at the end of the group to walk right behind you, because not all of these travellers are what they appear to be. Who but I should know this better?

A Sadducee with his cortège of Torah-disciples who look as if they derive from rich families, bit his mule to your side. Full of confident arrogance he looks down to you, tries to start a disputation.  
Again some of this Mitzwot-amoured soldiers, who have learned nothing else but to hit with the edgeless sword of always the same arguments, who don't understand how the naked, weaponless wrestler escape his clumsiness with a gracious turn, without any effort.

Dumb of anger and grinding his teeth, the old man moves on.  
You are the reason that he lost his face in front of his pupils. You have made yourself another enemy.  
Why don't you care? Do only the other people count for you, those who are looking for – I don't know what – in which you raise hope?  
What do they find in your words?

I don't understand what you say, I never did.  
In the beginning I had seriously made the effort, but your words are like mirrors in a mirror in a mirror. So many layers, so many meanings one never can comprehend them.  
I just know one thing: They, who believe to understand you, are fools. Fools, who try to cut down your mind to the level of their own diminutive intellects.

* * *

You didn't want to go to Jerusalem directly but spend this night as a guest of the Pharisee in Bethany.  
He isn't poor, his house is great. Nevertheless, it seems to me back-breakingly cramped there. All of them are there: Your mother, Lazaros with his both sisters Maretha and Maryam, Jehoseph from Arimathia and others whose names and faces I should know.

As always I look for a place from which I can watch without being watched myself.  
The mood is cheerful, and it isn't just the pleasant anticipation of the forthcoming feast. It is because of you, because you are with them again. Everybody circles around you like the planets around the sun, everybody shines in your light.

During the meal Jehoseph refers the newest rumours in Jerusalem: They have captured my old friend Barabba. The survivors of his following have taken refuge in the mountains to hide there in the caves.  
First the execution of the Baptist and now this – the Romans and their stooge Herodes seem to wish to provoke a future revolt by themselves with all their strength.

The food is eaten, the empty plates are carried away, wine and charosset are handed around. The conversation turns to more pleasant subjects, as suddenly somebody thrusts themself through the crowd of seated people to you.  
I have already jumped up and grabbed my dagger when I recognize that it is only a woman.  
Before somebody can hinder her, she pours balm over your feet, over your head and falls to her knees in front of you to touch the ground with her forehead. The overwhelming odour of spikenard spreads and covers the one of food, smoke and sweat.

"What a waste!" mutters Jaaqobh and approving muttering agrees with him.

"One could have sold the ointment for more then _three hundred_ denarii and gave the money to the poor!"

I don't hear your reply, I can't endure being in the same room with you, with the others any longer and turn to walk away.

It is Shimon who grabs my arm and pushes me in a dark corner: "Have you heard - Barabba captured! Do you know what it means?"

I don't listen to him, his fervid words sputter meaningless over me. His eyes capture the dim light, they seem to glow like that of a bird of prey. A mirror of myself three years ago.  
It should be disconcerting to me, to have it held before me. But all I feel is amusement and nostalgia in equal shares. How pleasant it has been to fight for something, to be able to believe in something.

"It doesn't concern me!" I interrupt his flow of words at last, "You can't free the people, Shimon."

He stands there mouth open, as if I have beaten him, swallows hard, but his eagerness prevails at once.

_I _can't free them, but _he_ can! _Him_!" Shimon snarls with clenched teeth.

"No, not even Jeshua. None of them," I answer with a cheerless smile, "Nobody can do it but the people themselves. But they don't want it! If they have nobody to follow anymore, they will creep under the bay unsolicited. Under this rule of the Romans, the Babylonians, the Egyptians, and if they can't find a strange one, then under one of lords of their one blood. They are afraid, Shimon, they don't want freedom. All they are moaning for are just more comfortable conditions under the bay!"

I loose myself from his grip, leave him standing there.

_Traitor!_ he hisses behind me.

* * *

It is dark and cold in the small garden in the backyard. And quiet, because a lot of Bethany's habitants have already left for Jerusalem.

I am determined not to pace around like a wild animal in a cage, lean my back against the next wall and fold my arms in front of my chest. I try to ignore the pieces of the argument I can hear from inside, from which I suppose to hear your voice every now and then.

My eyes try to close, tiredness after passing the night waking. Fatigue masquerades as false peace.  
I have learned to sleep standing, I am also trained to wake from one moment to the next. I don't hear your steps, but I know that you are there, that it is you, even before I can see you.  
I smell the fragrance of balm that you carry with you, I breathe deep and feel how my lips twitch, try to form something like a smile.

You have stopped by the almond trees, reach after your tallit, to lift it from your shoulders to cover your head.  
It is as if I am taken right back in time three years ago. Then, in Peräa, you had separated yourself from the others, too, to pray. And I'd watched you out of my hideout, send by the council of the Zealot to kill you.  
We hadn't wanted another leader of men in this damned land that spawns more prophets and miracle workers than beasts of burden. We've wanted unity. Under one doctrine – in fact, not one which deals in peace and love, but rebellion.

It seemed so simple. I was good, I had fulfilled every mission so far, I was proud, that I hadn't assassinated none of my victims from behind. _My _dagger always hit from the front, let the occupier and collaborators know about their deserved doom.  
But as I had graped you and knelt over you ready to strike, you hadn't resisted, you just looked at me. And I had failed.  
I came to kill you, but instead I found death. The death of all my ideals, of my faith.

I was able to persuade Barabba to wait and see, persuaded him that you after all were on our side. You preached that you came not to send peace, but a sword and fire on the earth, the tattle about love for enemies was only for Roman ears.

You lay your head in the neck, spread your arms as if you want draw the moon in an embrace. The tallit floats from your head and the light makes the drops of balm in your curls twinkle like dew.  
I claw the fingers in my sleeves to hinder my hands to reach out.

"Juda," you say gently.

From your mouth, even my name sounds sweet, falls like a new embossed coin in the coal-black pit of my heart, glows there for a moment.  
I'm not surprised, that you know I'm here.  
I prepare myself and step forward out of the shadows. You turn to me.

"Juda."

A second golden shooting star draws his burning path through my heart and I wrap my arms firmer around my breast.  
You come to me, stop before me. Because I don't answer, don't look up, you reach out, put your hand on my cheek. I shy away like a nervous horse, grab your wrist and press your hand on my mouth.  
Let it suffocate me, let it be my death!  
Your touch is able to banish demons, to heal the sick – Heal me.  
_Heal me!_  
I will look at you without shame, without the fear to see this pain in your eyes, this terrible smile full of commiseration and grief that is allotted for those who crave for something you can't give them.

You lay your hand lightly on my head, like a blessing and I break away, advance gasping backward. Myself is the demon – banish it and nothing will be left but an empty casing.

"Don't touch me!" I splutter with this kind of sound in my voice, what was the last some Romans have heard in their lives.

You are wiser then them, you do what I demand, lower your arms and stand there silent and motionless.  
I cover my face moaning, claw the fingers in my hair, scratch with the nails over my scalp as if this could bring me to forget your touch. As I press the heels of my hands hard on my eyes, a shower of bright pearls dance there in the blackness behind my hooded eyes. Glowing like the drops in your hair.  
Why don't you go away, why don't you leave my alone?!

Your hush, your silence sinks on me like a coat, dazes my madness.

"Juda."

Thrice. Thrice already. You make me rich.

Your hands lay on my shoulders; they are weightless, warm like the wings of a cherub, and still crushing me with the weight of a whole range.

"Look at me," you ask.

God, I can't help but to do so. And there ... is no disdain in your eyes.  
No pity.  
But something that I never dared to expect to find there.

You pull me to you and I stumble in your embrace.  
You don't release me, although you have to feel how my body reacts to your touch.  
And finally, at last, I dare to lay my arms around you. Gently, very gently, so I want not to awake from this wonderful dream.  
Your head sinks on my shoulder and I am lightheaded with joy.

* * *

Then you disengage gently from me, look back to me while walking, reach out for me. I follow you back to the house.  
Sleeping figures are lying on the ground, the fire is covered for the night, just one lamp burns still.  
You take it as you go upstairs.  
They have relinquished you a chamber for your own. As I hesitate, you take my hand, pull me inside with you. The curtain falls swishing back on its place.  
I look back, feel as if you've brought me to a place where I'm not allowed to be.

As I turn to you again you have taken of your tallit, kneel on the ground to open your sandals. Then you untie you girdle and dispose of your kethoneth.  
Finally you stay there before me like the Almighty has created you.  
Life has formed you – with the scarred, horny hands, the sinewy muscles of a craftsman, with the leanness and the sunburned features of an ascetic – but it can't hide that you are a scion of David. A King.  
_O God, how beauteous you are! _

My lips seem to have formed these words silently, because you look at me with a smile that makes me forget to breathe.  
I pant, shaking for air, close my eyes and dare to reach out. My fingertips touch your shoulder, run along your collarbone slowly, very slowly down over each rib. You step forward into my touch until not only my fingertips but my whole hand lies on your breast, which rises and lowers in the same rhythm, like your breath that strikes warmly my cheek. My lips. Touched by yours.

I place my arms around you, pull you to me, dig my fingers in your hair and breath so deep in that my kiss steals the breath out of your lungs.  
You place your head in your neck, gasping, and my mouth searching for compensation finds your chin, your throat. Your shoulders, your breast I can only reach for the price of moving away from you. As I try to sink on my knees to kiss your belly, you stop me, loose my girdle and grab the cloth of my kethoneth to pull it over my head.

Nothing terrifies you – neither the dagger in its sheath around my neck, nor the scars which bear witness to the wounds some of my victims inflict upon me before the blade of my dagger found its way under their ribs.

Why indeed? Why should you fear me? You know you inflict a greater loss on me, hurt me much deeper.

You kneel down, unlace my sandals, and as you raise, you do the same with the dagger, loose the string and it is begone. Begone.  
Your fingers meet the bare skin of my neck, stroke down my back and make me shiver so hard as if I have ague. I cling to you and no fabric, no weapon - nothing is no longer between us.  
I don't know if I will survive this.

Your lips streak my temple, my ear. You whisper my name. And for the first time I understand – my heart understands – all the meanings you have given a word.

_Yes!_

If you let yourself sink down on the bed and pull me with you, or if I urge you on the bed, I can't say. We kneel, lay there.  
It almost hurts to feel anything other then your touch, but your warm, horny hands stroke the chill of the sheets from my skin.  
I roll around so that you lay on me, that you cover me with your body, so that I may feel the whole length of your body on mine, I place our legs, cling my arms around your hips and your neck to hold you, never let you go. But my hands won't come to rest, want to touch, to clasp around, to caress every iota of this wonderfulness you are.  
My fingers draw the line of your brows, your cheekbones, your beard. I kiss your spikenard-smelling hair, the wrinkles on your forehead, in the corners of the eyes, of your mouth.  
Let me make you forget your grief, beloved, give it to me. Give it to me ... !

A coppery taste on my tongue, I have bitten you so hard, that blood flows, I try to kiss the pain away, try to fight the desire to dig my teeth in your shoulder again, to devour you. I wish I could encase you like water, pervade you like fire, that there would be nothing that divides us, not skin, not flesh, not bones.

We roll around, you reach out blindly, dig a hand in my hair, you toss your head from one side to the other, your lips half open, your eyes closed. So beauteous, so glorious you are! My sight becomes indistinct to rainbow-coloured propitiation, but after the time of drought I will drown, I dive again down to press my lips on your throat. You wriggle in my embrace and your thigh streaks my loins, makes me pant for breath, makes me cling to you fiercely.  
I don't want salvation, I want eternity.

Our mouths meet again, I taste the wine, your blood, the salt of my tears. You surrender to me entirely, nestle yourself in my hands, rear up to present yourself totally, whisper my name like a prayer.  
It is desperation, agony, ineffable joy.

I have thought I am a seared, fruitless tree, whose most merciful faith would be the axe. It is a mystery that I am able to give you so much. You've found a hidden spring deep inside of me – drink it dry, drink my soul dry till the last drop...!

That is more, that is so much more, than my mind was able to excogitate in the sweetest nightly visions, the most agonizing daydreams.  
We lie close entwined around each other in the darkness, the lamp extinct long ago, you touch my wound-kissed lips, and still and again, it casts a shiver from my mouth to my loins, every part of my body, my being. I tremble so much, that I believe I begin to fall apart when you release me.  
My lord, my king, my god.  
How much I love you!

You have healed me, you have banished the demon out of me.  
I was no more. There was no longer an ego.  
Was one with you. Safe.  
Complete.

_Give the paradise to the righteous, God of Israel. I do not want it. I swap it for the joys of this night. And when the eternal perdition is the price for it, so it is small._

* * *

The first cock crows. It starts to dawn.  
Likely – I couldn't be certain, because the chamber is windowless.  
Your head rests on my breast, your hands on my shoulders.  
You have dragged your tallit – the woven memento to commemorate Gods commandments – as a blanket around our twisted bodies. For this alone, if they found us so, they would stone us to death at once. I believe not even you could find words to excuse this blasphemy.  
I hold my breath to hinder myself to burst into laughter and wake you up.

_Just throw your stones!_ Carry off whole ranges, cast, watch how they burst in the heat of the flames - but you will be unable to suffocate this fire, never.  
I really have fever. Real fever, not only in my mind, which is full of this strange, drunken poetry. Maybe... because of this, maybe God could forgive this sacrilege – therefore, I am not responsible for this, what I am doing, because I am sick, was it, since you have looked at me for the first time.  
My heart hurts so much.

You are awake, I hear it from the sound of your breath, feel it, as your hands close tighter around my shoulders.

With a deep, sighing breath you rise. I sit up, too, feel your hand on my head, turn it, nestle my face to your palm like any dumb creature, which hasn't any other ability than this to express its affection.

"Juda," your hand strokes over my cheek, "Turn me over to the High Council. This very day."

I nod, kiss your fingers, which you deprive me slowly. The curtain rustles as you leave the chamber.

I don't ask why.  
You want it. That's reason enough for me.

I sink back and roll around on my belly. My hands grab the sheet and I dig my face in the fabric to breathe your fragrance that clings in it.

* * *

The palm fronds in the hands of the crowd who form a guard of honour, stir up the dust from the street.  
Everybody appeared to hail to you: The sick, who hope for healing, the poor, that you will feed them, the revengeful, that you may be vengeful for them, the oppressed, that you free them, the arrogant with the hope to rule in your name, your enemies with the desire to see you overthrown.  
They are legion. The crowd reaches five, six rows from the city-gates till the border-area of the uptown, where Jehoseph's house is located.

The crowd is in motion, they push and hustle to get closer to you. All around are shouting, singing people - here sounds a psalm, goes under in the shouts of joy: "_The Messiah_!" There the crowd intones another psalm which drowns in the fair, rising and sinking the women's howl of joy.

"The king, the king of Israel!"

They take up the cry and carry it along.  
Curious onlookers join the ranks. Behind the mass of dancing, shouting, singing people merchants chaffer at booths where they keep victuals and luxury goods for sale. Palanquins and carts – from which the riot infect mounts and beasts of burden, whose roars join the cacophony – search their ways through the throng.

Here flashes an irate eye under a hood, there the blade of a badly covered weapon in the pleat of a robe. Sicarii – headless and at variance without Barabba – in the hope to be able to use your power over the crowd.  
Or perhaps just ordinary hitman who kill for anybody who pays enough.  
I ask myself how valuable your death would be for your enemies. The uproar you have picked up at the start of the week in the temple, the Sanhedrin has neither forgotten nor forgiven. And this entrance now is an impetuous slap, a punch in Herodes' face: Here's somebody whom the title, which he claims in vain for so long, is awarded to ingenuously.  
Only the Romans barely maintain their presence. Hardly a patrol, mere guards in front of the _villae_ of the uptown, with straying gazes, sweaty faces under their helmets, the hand near the hilt of the gladius.  
The sentiment is charged like before a rainstorm.

* * *

Jehoseph has travelled before us to prepare his home to your coming. He awaits us at the gate of his enclosure, he walks towards you with a bright smile and outstretched arms.

"Jeshua! Rabbi! Welcome! Welcome, all of you!"

The dining-room is spacious, equipped like a _triclinium_ of a Roman house. Depreciatory looks meet the old merchant for this exhibition of conformity, but nobody dares to become clearer.  
But only the furniture is Roman – on the table stays the wine, the unleavened bread and the other dishes.  
As the servants appear with the water-bowls, you ask them to go, kneel down, put a towel on your lap and reach out for Andreas' foot, who stands nearest to you. He stumbles almost with shock and must be held by his brother.

"Rabbi, no! Don't!" he gasps in panic and bits his lips.

You continue to hold him, take at last his other foot, too, and wash it.  
One after another let this care happen - Shimon makes the greatest fuss.  
You kneel there in front of them, look up with a smile that seems to ask, astonished, why they don't understand.  
Captured in their own abashment and shame, they don't recognize the unbridled tenderness in your gaze, in your touch.  
_Shame. _Yes.  
I remember and suddenly I feel sorry for them.  
As Shimon steps back, your glance meets mine. Your teeth flash brightly, as your smile becomes almost a laugh.  
"He that is washed is clean," you say and rise to leave without having accomplished anything.

The others stand there, stroke their fingers through hair and beard, exchange nervous looks and watch me derisively. They fail to see, poor fools that they are, they understand nothing, nothing at all.

Jehoseph asks you to lead the ceremony in his place, you speak the blessing over the first cup of wine, hand around the bread and the herbs.  
Finally you take place on the left couch next to the host; Johanan accomplishes it to claim the free place at your side.  
He should. I don't know where to take the strength from, to lay beside you without closing you in my arms.

I sit down on a cushion at the feet of your couch.  
The stress, that the march through the city has caused in me, abates slowly. Makes room for something that is so strange to me, that I first don't realize what it could be.  
Peace.  
Something absolutely different from the mere absence of anger, fear or desire.  
I sit there with lowered head, let the bowls and plates pass by untouched. I believe that I never will be hungry again after last night.  
I size the conversations as a number of meaningless sounds, the voices interweave to a felted string, in which only yours remain recognizable as a clear, golden thread.

"One of you shall betray me," you say so quietly, as if you have ask for the cup with the sweetmeat.

Breathless silence follows your words, than a riot of voices. "_No_!" "_Not I, rabbi, absolutely not!_" "_Never!_"

"Who?" asks Johanan, leans back to your breast and stares to you with wide eyes. "Rabbi, who is it?"

You don't answer. You stand up, reach out for the bread. As you lower your head to speak the blessing, the voices fall silent and all the others stand up, too.

"Take, eat; this is my body."

You break up a piece, give it to Johanan and pass the rest to Jehoseph, to the right of you. Johanan puts it hesitating in his mouth and eats; devoutly but without understanding.  
You take the goblet, raise it in silence.

"This is my blood."

This time you turn to your left, to me.  
I take the vessel out of your hands. I look into your eyes, lose myself in them, don't feel metal but your warm skin, your lips, don't taste wine but your blood, your kiss, you.

"That you have to do, do quickly."

I nod, pass the vessel by and search tumbling a way through the others, who shy away from me as if I would be leprous.

* * *

The polished bronze gates shimmer in the light of the torches like gold, reflected in the guards' helmets.  
The stands in the peristyle are put up again. Olibanum and doves change hands, Roman coins become swapped for sheqel on which aren't the offensive image of the divine imperator.  
All is remained unaffected as if you never had overthrown the tables, never whipped the merchants in your glorious rage.

Even on this night the temple isn't empty, the death-screams of the sacrificial animals, the smell of burned meat and sweet incense rises to the dark sky.  
Light falls out of the assembly room of the priests, arguing voices; I suppose to hear your name.  
The Sanhedrin has gathered – now, on the evening of Pesah.  
Some latecomers hurry with great steps and robes gathered around them by. Me the guards stop.

"Bring me to Qajjafa!" I demand.

One of the judges turns round, slows down and grabs the shoulder of his companion to stop him, too.

"Wait. I know you, redhead. I have seen you with this Galilean. What do you want here?"

"He will be on the Mount of Olives in a garden called Gethsemane this evening, alone with his closest confidants."

"Alas, will he?" barges the other suspiciously, "And you? Are you not one of these confidants?"

"I am Juda _Ischariot_."

* * *

A dozen emissaries of the Council are chosen to arrest you – accompanied by the threefold number of Temple-guards. It seems that the brave Romans fear a handful of fishermen and shepherds.  
Coins are jingling in the bag at my belt. Thirty denarii. The monthly wage of a craftsman. That's all you are worth to them – or the peace they think they can buy while controlling you, who after the death of the Baptist and Barabbas' capture is the only one able to direct the rage of the masses.

What a comedy. If you wouldn't want that they find you, they never would. It is as if a herd of buffaloes were breaking through the trees. It only wanted that they tout themselves with a barker. The priests stumble blind through the brushwood, their precious robes get caught up in the twigs and ledges, their soldiers dazzle themselves with the light of their torches.

I walk in front of them, not far enough that they loose me out of sight, but far enough not to be blinded myself.

You are alone in this clearing, you look up as I come to you, rise tumbling to stumble in my arms, to clutch to me like a drowning man.

"Tell me why!" you gasp, "Why must I do this?!" I freeze under this naked fear in your voice. "Help me, Juda! Help me! Remind me – say who I am!"

I want to. I will say whatever you wish to hear from me. But the truth is too strong, the words burst out of me, before I can keep them back: "I don't know! And it does not matter to me, if you are the messiah or a peculator, son of god or a demon! You are you! And that, therefore, is the reason why I love you!"

Suddenly you become soft in my arms, all devotion, like yesterday night.

"Yes. Therefore," you breathe, "for this love."

The torchbearers are near, I remember what I have to do and kiss your cheek.  
You turn your head and your lips touch mine.

"Forgive me," you whisper.

Then the priests are there, the guards take you, we become torn apart, the commanding voices wake the others. One cries out as he sees what happens to you, attacks the nearest guard and wrestles with him for his weapon. Swords become dragged, it comes to a scuffle. Someone knocks against me and still benumbed, I stumble backwards.  
_Forgiveness...?_ Wherefore? What are you so afraid of?!

"Jeshua!"

I rush forward, wrench two soldiers by their mantels out of the bunch, push forward between the others. I fend off a torch which is whipped in my face with one hand, punch another one with my fist, before I remember my dagger. I pull it, stab blind around me, to attain to you. The blade slips of a hardened cuirass, drives in soft flesh.  
Something hits my temple.

Blackness.

* * *

Dried blood in my face, in my hair. Vertiginous. Nausea.  
It is light, already midday, to go by the length of the shadows. I kneel there where I've been woken up, motionless on the spot, don't know how long.  
No clear, single thought in my mind.  
I watch a bug, scrawling there in the hollow my head has left in the sand, who examines the blood. It tries to get out of the scrape, but the substrate is too slackly, he slides back, falls and lies there helpless on his back.

Where are you?

As I step from under the trees out in the open, the sun stings like a hot wire in my eyes, causes me horrible headache.

I don't know where to go. To Jehoseph's house? To the temple?

The wind is hot, it tastes like metal and sulphur. Nevertheless it is cold, the sky is covered with black thunderclouds. It is unnaturally silent, no bird sings.  
Lizards, a snake scurries over the path, out of their hidings into the sun, a coalblack goat, its yellow eyes wide open in panic, gallops out of the city into the desert.

The mood of the crowd in the streets is frisky, but their laughter sounds wrong, hysterical. A Roman patrol marches over the marketplace, I watch an old man stopping an adolescent, as the boy picks up a stone.  
They look me over appalled, suspicious. Too late I remember all the blood in my face. But nobody holds me up.  
Until suddenly I become turned around and pushed in a doorway.

_You...!_"

Shimon, with torn robe, dishevelled hair and tears in his dirty face. I reach out for him, grab one of the tatters.

"What's happened to him?" I snarl.

With a howl he pushes me against the wall, my head collides with the stones and the pain almost blinds me. Shimon grabs my throat.

"What's happen to him, you damned traitor, you dog, you ... cursed one?!" he cries sobbing and jerks himself out of my grip. "They have crucified him! _Crucified_!"

No.  
_No! No, that can't be true. It must not be ...! _  
A wave of horror, of awareness breaks down on me, and I fall to my knees choking.  
You knew it!  
You would have known it – _that_ was the reason for your fear! You left me with the belief to betray you to the Sanhedrin would be a manoeuvre to make them sentence you, so that the people would rise, would join you to shake off the Roman dominion.  
You knew that this wouldn't happen, you knew ... that the cross would be your faith.

Why, _why_?!

* * *

I find myself back again in the garden, ask me, if I've dreamed to have been in the city.  
That this all was nothing but a horrible nightmare.  
No. There is still the piece of cloth from Shimon's robe in my fist.

I look searching around. There. Yes, right.  
Here you were waiting, here you knelt as I came to betray you. I dig my hands in the ground, press it against my lips until the sand gushes in my mouth.  
Here.

It is so dark, as if it is night already. I look up, the twigs of the tree above me silhouetted even darker against the lead-grey sky.

My girdle as rope. A great, broken of branch there on the ground as a step.  
No broken neck by this little height.  
_Let me bear at least a part of your pain!_

I kick the branch away. A sharp jerk, stinging torment in the neck that rockets upwards my spine like fire, gagging, tightness in my breast.

My fingers claw at the belt, try without success to get between it and my throat.

My toes search the ground, scratching over stones and dust.

_Air!_

Fight against the darkness. Must stay consciousness!

Your pain. Y_our pain! _

It is as if thousand blades pierce my breast.

_You_.  
Let me bear ... !

The paradise ... God ... _I do not want it. I swap it ... for the joys ... of this night! _

You.

* * *

A review would be great... ;-)

* * *

**_Story of the Greeks_**_: Refers to the legend of Tantalus, who killed his own son and served him up as food for the gods. Judas mentioned above Tantalus' punishments.__  
_**_Mizwot_**_: Jewish religious law that neither is written in the Torah nor defined by the rabbis.__  
_**_Bethany_**_: A village near Jerusalem, at the east side of the Mount of Olives, hometown of the sisters Maria, Martha and Lazarus. In Bethany was also the house of Simon the Leper (the Pharisee).__  
_**_Charosset_**_: Sweet with dried fruits, nuts and wine – part of the traditional Meal to the feast of Pesah.__  
_**_Spikenard:_**_ Sweet smelling plant - its roots can be crushed and distilled into an oil that is used for perfume and incense.__  
_**_Tallit_**_: A prayer shawl that is worn over the head during the prayer. __  
_**_Cherub_**_: Kind of angel.__  
_**_Kethoneth_**_The most common type of robe in ancient Palestine, a__ long shirt with loose, half-long sleeves and a wide belt or a sash round the waist. __  
_**_Gladius_**_: Roman Sword. __  
_**_Triclinium_**_: Appellation both for an antique Roman couch as for the dining-room where these couches where positioned.__  
__The _**_Sanhedrin_**_ or High council was for a long time the highest Jewish political authority and the highest court at the same time. Its members were priests, elders and scribes. The chairman during Jesus' time was Kaiphas/Qajjafa._


End file.
